


adornment

by orphan_account



Series: adoring, adored [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Codependency, Dom/sub, M/M, Rimming, metaphorical collaring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 02:14:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ink his laughter into your skin and wear him forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	adornment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kylobe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kylobe/gifts), [t34lbloods (perculious)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perculious/gifts).



 

Jake kisses a ring around your neck almost every day and you suspect it's all for the way you shiver; but when you ask him in a moment of teasing whence came such dotage, whither such devotion, he tells you _darling I will never forget the day you severed it._  
  
You fall mute when he tosses that sentence out.  His hands are still, folded together on the tabletop.  Coffee cooling in the "#1 GRANDAD" mug, his eyeglasses are smudged on one lens, from pushing them up his nose when he was too tired to aim for the bridge.  Tender bitemarks are soft red on your clavicles, fading pink in the sunlight.  Matter-of-fact.  Just another Tuesday.  
  
Guilt swells against your lungs because you aren't sorry.  You aren't sorry at all.  He's alive, and given a choice between saving the people you care about and saving yourself, you know what you'll choose one hundred percent of the time, no margin of error.  
  
"... I can't promise you I won't make that kind of decision again," you tell him, because you expect that Jake will ask you for that, and you know in a weary way that it's too much.    
  
You predict that Jake will order you not to throw your life away, tell you he doesn't want that kind of rescue, tell you the cost is intolerable.  So you think you should warn him in advance that, left to your own devices, you'd do it again.  Give him ample warning.  Pre-empt the request. You may be somewhat inhuman but even a robot can understand the rules of fair play.  
  
Instead of trying to extort false promises he leans across your breakfast and kisses your eyes shut.    
  
Soft brush of lips against the delicate skin of your eyelids; lingering pressure, the danger-thrill of having teeth so close to something so vulnerable.  The scent of his body.  A sliver of tenderness that cuts into your thoughts and scatters them, like severing balloon strings.  
  
When you blink he is still there, forehead not-quite-touching your own.  His eyes are lanterns, and you are a moth.    
  
"It's never going to be your decision again, Dirk," he tells you, firm and simple. As if it's a normal thing to say.    
  
Your torso trembles, ribcage juttering.  The last spasm of the urge to flee?  The urge to dissolve and beg for mercy?  
  
"Your neck is mine, now.  Finish your cereal," Jake says, and opens up the newspaper to the classified section, pondering a lawnmower as he sits back down.  
  
Time is flowing in unsteady slow motion, a painful halting limp.  
  
He's on the leafblowers when he raises his eyebrows without looking up and remarks, "I don't hear any eating."  
  
Fingers shake as you lift the spoon to your mouth and let the cereal scrape your palate, lips closing around the food.  The metal clinks against the side of the bowl when you set the utensil back down; he hums, pleased, and turns the page to skim over used cars.  The potted spider plant above the sink is glowing soft-emerald in the morning sunlight.  He's watered it already.    
  
You fold your hands in your lap in a posture that means _I'm obeying you, I'm not resisting;_ palms skyward, grip loose.  
  
You are numb, dislocated.  
  
Transubstantiation.  _This is my blood you drink, this is my body you eat._   Lucky Charms aren't holy wafers by a long fucking shot, but he bought them for you and he poured your bowl for you and he just told you to eat, you think that's enough to make it a little eucharistic.  A little like surrendering to the enemy (the higher) power.  
  
Your neck is his?  Your mouth is his, your teeth, your tongue, every organ and every bone. What were you thinking?  You weren't.  And now look at you.  
  
(After all this time - you don't know if you have the capacity to leave him, anymore, and you rather think not.  After drinking and eating and perhaps drowning in the endless manna of Jake's love for you, letting yourself be tamed like a feral thing gentled to the bridle and bit, the idea of leaving is inconceivable.  You can't imagine step one.  You don't know how to cut and run anymore; it's like a song you heard once in childhood, remembered only in piecewise scraps.  The ascetic cannot return to the wilderness; he has lost the calluses on his feet and hands, he can no longer stray freely.)  
  
Jake looks up when he doesn't hear you take another spoonful, half-grinning, like he's about to tease you some more for dragging your feet. The expression falls away when he sees you.  Reshapes into something else, something vivid and bright.  
  
(And you knew it was happening, you allowed it to happen, you let him wear down your sharp edges as gently as water wearing away a stone.  You let him burn the escape ladder, let him throw away the key to your chains.  So what happens now, if he decides he doesn't love you anymore?)  
  
"Dirk?"  Tentative.  Probing.  
  
(What will happen when he discards you, now that you have lost all means to defend yourself and no longer know how to survive without him?)  
  
"Dirk."  Coaxing.  
  
You let his voice drag you back to the kitchen table.  Your eyes locate him pinned against the flat two-dimensional world unfurling around your head.  Reality is compressed, dizzying.  Nothing is distinct, it's a jumble of lines and colors.  Spatial reasoning is shot.  Audiovisual data is stacking up, all incomprehensible static.  
  
But Jake is here, and he is real.  
  
And he doesn't know why you can't eat your Lucky Charms.    
  
He is waiting for you to tell him what's wrong.  
  
(You don't know what you'll do if someday he doesn't want you anymore.  It's a blank space in your imagination.  A complete unknown.  To a tactician this ought to raise alarm.  This, alone, should be reason enough to run like hell, as far and as fast as you can, until you're far enough to recover whatever pieces he's left untouched and rebuild yourself.  A fistful of pebbles, clutched tight.  The last few bits and pieces of your resistance.)  
  
"Come back down to me, love," Jake murmurs.  He's laced his fingers together, as he cannot reach yours; thumbs rubbing against his knuckles, the unconscious desire to soothe you.  
  
Only ever sweet and gentle.  
  
You anchor yourself on his eyes, green as fire, green as your undoing.  
  
With careful attention he watches you chew, and swallow.  
  
In the end -  
  
(- and in the end they are only pebbles.  As you let them go you forget, almost immediately, why you ever wanted to keep them; why you ever guarded any portion of yourself so jealously, as if by doing so you could stop the tide.)  
  
\- in the end, once you pass through the fire you will have only your faith in him, and you understand that it is the nature of your love for him that it will burn up everything else.  There's nothing certain about human beings, nothing certain in probability, and if you insist on waiting for a guarantee you're never going to get it.  Faith will have to be enough.  
  
Besides, it's too late to fight.  
  
You have already surrendered.  Eons and universes ago.    
  
"I'm okay," you say, because he's worried, and pick up your spoon.  "Sorry."  
  
"Not at all," Jake demurs, watching you eat with a banked heat in his gaze.  He enjoys the fact that you're doing what he told you to do, even if it took you an unreasonable amount of time and even if it's something absurdly simple.  He'd probably get a kick out of you breathing, if he told you to do it.  Jake English is not a hard man to please.  "I ought to be apologizing to you.  It was hardly polite breakfast conversation."  
  
"Can you stay home today?" you ask, between bites.  The request falls out of your mouth unplanned.  
  
Jake pauses.  He's still watching you, watching your free hand trace the bruises he sucked into your neckline.  You notice yourself doing it after he does, and your fingers halt, caught between the urge to hide and the pleasure of being admired.  
  
"Well.  Sure.  I'll phone up, tell them I won't be in," he murmurs.  Takes a long, last swig of his coffee.  Licks his lips.    
  
"Were you doing something important?" you murmur back.  Still lightheaded.  Still a little unsteady.  Faint note of regret.  
  
He leans back in his chair, scratching at his stubble in a thoughtful way.  "Clearing up brush in the park - storm last Saturday knocked a few big branches loose. Nothing special," Jake assures you.  Pauses.  Gives you a mock-stern look.  "... It isn't your job to judge that, Dirk," he reminds you.  You feel your pulse jump.  "It's mine."  
  
"... Yeah," you agree.  
  
"It's awfully considerate, but you aren't to think about my to-do list before you decide to go ahead and tell me you want something."  Earnest.  Flustered.  
  
"Yes, Jake," you say, setting your spoon into your empty bowl in a five o'clock position.  His voice washes over you like liquid over sand, dissolving structure, smoothing you out.  You want him to keep talking so you can keep agreeing with him.  Saying yes feels pleasant.    
  
His hands settle on your shoulders, kneading.  The tingle of blood through stiff muscle, the release of tension - you breathe out hard, and lean back into his touch.    
  
"Tell me what you're thinking," he says.  
  
Thinking is so unpleasant, you'd rather be offline.  Your brow wrinkles.  He snickers, quietly.  
  
"Come on, then," he says, leaning down to brush his lips against the crown of your head.  "Give it a go."  
  
It takes a moment or two to collect yourself.  
  
"... That I should give in," you tell him.  
  
"To ...?"  
  
"You."  His thumbs keep kneading circles at the nape of your neck.  Letting you talk.  "You make this so good it's - it's too hard to fight and it's a losing battle.  I don't want to keep holding back."  
  
"I don't mind," Jake tells you.  "The dragging it out of you bit.  You rail as hard as you can not to be duped into believing the best of things.  A fellow doesn't mind being right all the time."  Light and easy.  A summer smile in his tone.  Like cool water down your throat.  "And I _like_ taking care of you, Dirk."  
  
You are softer and softer beneath his touch, malleable as clay.  "I don't want to fight anymore."  
  
"Me, you mean?"  
  
"Yeah...  No.  Myself, too.  I'm so fucking difficult, it's -"  You struggle to put your frustration into words.  "I don't know how you put up with me."  True, although you imagine the sex helps.  
  
"Giving yourself a lot of credit there, aren't you, chickadee."  His fingers card through your hair, soothing and repetitive.    
  
"I don't know what I'm going to do when you get sick of me."  It falls from your mouth with a simple, inevitable weight; the ball rolling away down the incline, compelled by gravity.  
  
His fingers stop.  
  
"I don't want to ruin this," you tell him.  "I don't want to make this stop working.  But I'm.  I'm me, and I won't blame you if you eventually just want me to leave."  Palms up.  Arms open.  You have run out of answers, and defenses.  
  
Jake is quiet for a long time, but his hands stay where they are.  You wait in the eye of the hurricane.

 

* * *

  
  
It's a good ten minutes before he clears his throat.  
  
"... Leaving isn't an option," he tells you, slow and even.  "Scratch that off the list altogether.  Don't bring it up again."  
  
"For me or for you?" you ask, head bowed, because you can't help it.  His fingers twitch.  
  
 _"Dirk."_  
  
"Yes?"    
  
His vocal cords are taut with strain.  "You're very stupid, love."  
  
"I'm -?"  
  
His arms are coiled around your shoulders, his hand cradling the side of your face; his skin lies flush to yours, his breath fervent and hot against your ear.  The strength of his grip is gentle and wholly unyielding.  You barely had time to flinch before his forearms locked down.  "You really think that in my right mind, possessed of all my faculties, I'd just let you leave?"  
  
Your mouth is open, but you have nothing to say to that.  
  
"Lord almighty.  You wholesale idiot."  
  
His hand runs lower, cupping your jaw, thumb sliding between your teeth so you can't close your mouth.  You make an odd, startled cry; he hushes you, petting your hair again, pressing kisses to your temple.  
  
"You aren't getting rid of me so easily," he hisses.  The same soft cry rises from the back of your throat like a wounded bird.  You don't want to get rid of him, you _don't._   You want the opposite.  "And if the devil nicks my soul and yanks my grey stuff out through my ears - if I ever lead you to believe I don't love you -" (he is holding you by your throat, he has wrapped his fingers across your adam's apple, a grip so firm it reduces your breath to gasps; his own voice is choked and thick with hurt) " - if Hades freezes and lobsters fly and that _ever_ happens - Dirk, you fool, _you won't be leaving anything important_."  
  
Only your anguished breath interrupts the ensuing silence.  
  
His grip relaxes into a soft, slow massage, modulating your panting.  You can't see through the water in your eyes.  You can't press back into his chest hard enough, or yield enough of yourself to his hold.  
  
"You won't go?" you hear yourself entreat, and are only a little ashamed of how wretched you sound, how pathetic with need.  Your hands are wrapped around his wrists - not to pull them away, but to keep them there.  "You won't let me go?"  
  
"Never."  
  
Spoken like the word of God, a certainty so powerful it establishes the laws of nature by being uttered.

He is hope incarnate. And you believe him.  
  
Your neck is his forever: the choice to die has been stripped from you.  
  
You exhale, and some lingering, stale darkness leaves your lungs.  
  
His grip relaxes, more of an embrace now, his hands petting your skin, soothing circles. You swallow, and discover he hasn't hurt you at all.  The tingling in your limbs, your liquid spine, your painless body are all whole and intact.  (Always gentle with you.  Always kind.)  
  
"I needed you to tell me," you tell him, eyes shut.  Soft red light glows through the lids as your chin rises and brings your face into a sunbeam.  He's petting your stomach, hands beneath your shirt.  "I _can't_ \- I can't _leave_.  Not anymore.  That's why."  
  
Because he's pressed so tightly to you, you feel every shudder through your skin.  Your admission knocks the last of his anger out of him; now he is only holding you like he's afraid to let go.  It occurs to you that you aren't the only one who's terrified of being left alone, and that you've scared him.  For that, you're sorry.  He knows you never meant to.  
  
"... Can I make you feel better?" you ask, stroking the arms that hold you.   Jake makes a sort of whuffing noise into your hair and leans down on you hard, for a moment.  Telling you he's okay by exhibiting play behavior. It makes you smile.  You're human enough to feel comforted.  
  
"Go shower," he tells you, quiet and muffled, "and wait for me in bed."  
  
Ah.  Your heart skips a beat.  You believe it always will.    
  
"Okay," you tell him, and kiss the joints of his thumbs before letting him untangle himself.

 

* * *

  
  
On your stomach, legs spread, hands clutching a pillow to your mouth.    
  
Jake licks you until you're wet and helpless and soft, muffled cries echoing against the walls; when you're slick enough he holds you splayed with his fingers and opens you up more with his tongue.  Running it around the rim, kissing your hole the way he kisses your mouth.    
  
You can't see straight.  You can't think.  It burns and it's too much and it's not enough, and it's awful and you don't want him to stop.  Shameful-hot, filthy and embarrassing and selfish.  Because he isn't getting anything out of it.  If he thought of doing this, it was only for you.  You wanted to give him something and instead -  
  
You're on your knees, hips canted up, head down.  Sweat drips down your lower back towards your neck, down your limbs.  He tells you you're _so good, so good for me, sweetheart,_ and presses his lips close and sucks.  It's difficult not to lurch away, and equally difficult not to squirm back, gasping - it's intense, almost too much.  The small mewling noises coming from your throat ramp up in volume.    
  
Jake strokes your glutes, thighs, back, whatever he can reach, as if he's trying to calm you down like a skittish animal, but his mouth doesn't let up at all.  If he stops to breathe hard against your skin, to call you his _baby, sugardoll, pretty thing_ , he replaces his tongue with his fingers.  When his mouth is on you his fingers knead and pull at your flesh and his fingernails bite your skin and it's -  
  
Stupidly good.  Like you're being split open but it doesn't hurt.  Your mouth is open like it's trying to mimick his, drooling onto the pillow.  Eyes unseeing.  Plunged down so far you feel like you'll never surface again.  You don't need to.  He told you, didn't he? He's got you.  He won't ever let you go.  
  
"Baby, you okay?" he whispers, spreading his fingers apart inside you as he drags them out, playing with you.  You can't actually find the language to reassure him - you can only vocalize, a needy urgent noise.  "Tell me."  
  
 _"More,"_ you slur out, squirming.  He closes his fingers and pushes them deeper, kissing your flanks.  " _Please_."  His breath is harsh and ragged.  
  
You can't see your dick, at this angle, so you don't get to observe him stroking you, but you don't need the visual.  A burning brand, agonizing in its intensity, he pumps his fist around you and it dances on the edge of pain.  You're babbling senseless pleas that serve only to communicate want - nothing intelligible, only desire.  
  
"Come on," Jake breathes against your lower back, plunging his fingers all the way in.  "Let me watch you."  
  
You can feel his face pressed against your skin, vaguely sense his line of sight.  When you come, you know what he's watching: you slamming down around his fingers, the way your back arches and balls tighten and toes spasm against the sheets, the way your shoulderblades scrunch together and distort the planes of your back.  The knowledge is like a chemical burn in your blood, a fully-aroused misery.  You can't believe he's giving this to you.  
  
"All right?" Jake is asking, dragging his fingers back and forth inside you, checking how sensitive you are.  You moan, dazed, body trembling.  " _God,_ you're gorgeous."  
  
"On - on my back?" you mumble, managing to turn your head and look in his general direction.  
  
"Of course, love," he tells you, leaning over you, pressing a kiss to your cheekbone.  You can't seem to find the leverage on your own - he helps you roll over, away from the patch where your semen spilled.  
  
You've got enough strength in your post-orgasm baby-deer-legs to wrap one of them around his waist. A pleading gesture.  You can see his erection.  And you've been so good.  "Please," you breathe.  You're sure your face is oozing naked greed.  "I want you."  
  
Jake laughs - it's a delighted infectious noise, you grin on automatic to hear it, wide and easy.  "Yeah?" he asks you, smoothing your damp hair off your forehead.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"So good for me," he murmurs in return.  Lube takes a minute, and then he's sliding in - he doesn't need to hold you open, you're still so relaxed.  Instead he laces his fingers with yours and presses your hands to the sheets.  You like this position best, next to riding him: you like seeing his face, letting him do all the work of fucking you, like the way everything else in the world fades off the edge of the horizon into an indistinct haze. 

Today you're going further, and further, and further off.  Everything feels sweet and momentous.  Every sensation is a fresh wave breaking against your skin: distinct and new.  
  
You aren't even hard - you don't feel any particular desire to be.  You only want to clutch him close and make him feel good.  Your head is a perfectly still pond, a gently growing fractal, an arctic snowfield - drenched in a serenity you can't name.  Peaceful, the way temples and churches are peaceful.  This is the center of things; you have found it.  Everything is easy.  
  
And he's so beautiful above you, this vulnerable creature of flesh and bone, who wants you so dearly and loves you so much.  You kiss at his throat, coax him deeper and deeper, dig your nails into his back and purr.    
  
"- come for me?" you request, soft and low and barely audible into his ear, as he pistons into you furiously.  His noises are perfect.  His eyes are wide and reverent; he kisses your breath away, makes sparks dance in your eyes, and obliges you.

 

* * *

 

It's a long time, sprawled against each other in bed, before that buzz starts to fade.  
  
You stroke Jake's skin and he holds you close, and you murmur nonsense to each other while you recover.  
  
It's only in the shower washing up, giddy and light, that you start to laugh.  "God, that was," you start, and then can't finish because he's laughing too.  
  
"By crickey," he agrees, and that sets you off again, and you both get soap in your eyes but you couldn't possibly mind.  Wet and clean, leaning against each other.  Things are going to be okay.  Your whole stomach is full of seltzer, or something equally fizzing and joyous; you kiss his face again and again, because it's perfect and yours for kissing and you love Jake more than you love anything else in the universe, and he lays soft kisses against your neck and collarbones for much the same reason.  
  
By the time you're done the bathroom is full of steam; toweling your hair dry, nuzzling his face against your nape he whispers, _I love you_.  You lean back into him, shutting your eyes, and tell him to say it again, and oh, he's beautiful when he laughs.  
  
"I love you," you tell him that evening when you're in bed, and you're sure he's already asleep.  
  
Jake smiles, and draws you closer.


End file.
